Looking Backward: Foot of Main Street, 1909

A working waterfront characterized the foot of Main Street in 1909. Here, in a photograph likely taken from the upper levels of the Dakota Elevator, is Main Street looking north across the Buffalo River. Barrels and grain sacks, not Adirondack chairs, line up along the wharf. The ticket offices of the Detroit & Buffalo Steamboat Company and Northern Steamship Company are at the foot of and east of Main Street. To their west, a passenger railroad is stationed at the old Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Terminal. Beyond is the Canal District, by then a predominantly Italian tenement enclave.